Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category

The Onion has always had long-running gags to tickle the minds of their most astute readers. For example, does the name Don Turnbee ring a bell? If you’re an Onion fan, it should: he’s a recurring Onion character who loves food.

To expand their coverage beyond news and into the exciting world of clickbait internet content, The Onion recently created ClickHole. Much in the same way The Onion parodies the news, ClickHole parodies sites like Buzzfeed and Upworthy with absurdities and non-sequiturs. So far they’ve only snuck in one running gag: firetrucks.

ClickHole’s first foray into firetrucks was about a year ago when they intentionally confused a firetruck for a marketing campaign. And it only got weirder from there:

Before Red Bull reached American shores in 1997, there were no “energy drinks” on our store shelves. Not knowing what we were missing, we went about our daily lives content with plain old coffee, tea, and soda. Hard to imagine that only 17 years ago, your local liquor store didn’t have an entire shelf dedicated to Red Bull, Rockstar, Monster, and 300 other beverages, each more foul tasting than the last.

But it wasn’t a sudden transition. A year before we had Red Bull, Coca-Cola introduced Surge. In both look and taste it was like an alien version of Mountain Dew. Similar amount of caffeine, similarly artificial flavor, but dyed slime green instead of neon piss yellow.

Around the same time Pepsi countered with the incomprehensibly marked Storm, another lemon-lime flavored soda that was also caffeinated — sometimes. This confusion caused more than its share of caffeine withdrawal headaches and it was dropped in 2000.

Coca-Cola is selling Surge again in limited quantities through Amazon in twelve packs of 16oz cans. I was able to get my hands on one of these rare shipments of Surge just before they sold out. Technically you can still find this neo-Surge online, but it’s from hoarders trying to resell the stuff at 20x the price. (Never underestimate the power of nostalgia.)

So, how does it taste? Pretty gross, actually — and exactly like I remember. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish this retro soda so I can stay up all night playing Nintendo 64 while listening to the Stone Temple Pilots.

Eat24 is an online restaurant ordering service that bills itself as the OpenTable of delivery. Their website reminds users that no pants are required for delivery, but the unusual approach to public relations doesn’t end there. The above Tweet suggests another use for their service; satisfying munchies brought on by excessive nighttime intoxication.

While some companies might delete such a tweet and find an intern to pin it on after sobering up, Eat24 has left the tweet intact. And I say good for them — nobody wants to read another bland company Twitter feed.

Recently I had some time to explore the streets of Copenhagen. It’s the capital of Denmark, an old seaside city with a distinctly fairy tale look. Every Dane is blond, blue eyed, in great shape, and is born with a bicycle in their hands. If you forget someone’s name, you can just call them “Christian Christiansen” and there’s a 95% chance you’ll be correct.

Important fact: Danes tend to speak English fluently. I had to ask people “Do you speak English?” now and then, but the answer was always “Of course!” The majority of the time Danes sized me up immediately and spoke to me in English before I could even say hello. Something to keep in mind if you’re unilingual.

Of the museums and such, I had a great time in the National Museum, the Round Tower, the Thorvaldsen museum, and the Rosenborg Palace. Of those, the National Museum is always free and has an impressive section on early human history. If you enjoy Romantic Era art, the Thorvaldsen museum is a must. Each sculpture contains enough symbolism to make a liberal arts major’s nipples explode with delight.

There’s two towers you can walk up in and get a view of the entire city: the Round Tower (Rundetårn) and the Church of Our Saviour (Vor Frelsers Kirke.) Since after a cramped airline flight and a lot of walking my knees were on their last legs (so to speak) I went with the Round Tower — for the first 3/4 of the way up the tower it’s a pleasant stroll up a winding ramp. After that there’s 2-3 flights of stairs and you’re out on a deck overlooking the city. Tickets are only a couple of bucks and the view is worth the price and hike.

The airport has a bicycle tire pump. I’d heard biking was big in Copenhagen and sure enough the airport bike pump was key evidence #1. There’s bike rental places are everywhere but it seems they welcome you to bring your own on the flight over.

It wasn’t until I saw rush hour during the week that I realized how many people bike in Copenhagen. The bike lanes fill up with congested traffic, bicyclists tailgating one another and riding side-by-side. But for the most part the lanes were clearly marked and people tended to obey the rules.

The first thing to notice about Copenhagen’s Metro is the drivers: there aren’t any. It’s like an airport tram, you can sit in the front and watch it move down the track on its own. The underground stations have interior doors for safety. (Coincidentally, we had twodeaths on the subway tracks in San Francisco while I was away. Is this something we should be doing?)

90 minute transfers on the bus/Metro system are pricy at around $5-$6, but it’s cheap compared to a cab. The iOS/Android app makes it easy to buy an electronic ticket.

The system is entirely proof of payment. Only once did anyone check my ticket, a friendly older guy who looked well past “retirement” age and well into “Wal-Mart greeter” age.

Currently there’s a whole new Metro subway line under construction that makes a ring around the downtown area. The ring should be completed in the next couple of years. Oh, and did I mention that all Metro trains run 24/7? To put it bluntly, Copenhagen’s Metro makes Tomorrowland look like Frontierland.

Ostensibly I was in Copenhagen for Ultra Dork SummitUbuntu Developer Summit (UDS), held at Bella Center. The hotel convention center reminded me of the old Metreon, with its striking design and strikingly ill-conceived layout.

This was the event where Valve announced the beta of Steam for Linux. Soon, children might not need a copy of Microsoft Windows to play those damn video games.

When I was in school we were taught that Halloween was an American holiday. While religious harvest holidays in the Fall dated back thousands of years, we were taught that Trick-or-treating and jack-o-lanterns were American traditions. But in recent years, I’ve heard of these traditions cropping up in places as far away as South America and the UK. And now I’ve seen American-style Halloween activities in Denmark with my own eyes.

At first I thought the jack-o-lanterns in near my hotel (the Nyhavn neighborhood) might be aimed at American tourists. But I didn’t see many American tourists. And I kept finding Halloween merchandise at local markets that were off the beaten path.

I visited my co-worker’s place on Halloween. He rented via AirBnB in a more suburban part of town. That night, the streets outside were crawling with costumed children going door to door! Who knew?!

If you enjoy hippie communities, you won’t find many places that fit the bill better than Freetown Christiania. It’s an authentic 70′s hippie commune neighborhood that makes Haight Street feel like Union Square. Sure, there’s little boutiques and cafes, but there’s also a few genuinely dive-y beer gardens, stages with live music, and not to mention the “Green Zone” where people sell marijuana in an open market.

Christiania is a beautiful little neighborhood, with winding streets that you can aimlessly explore for at least an hour or two. Despite the laissez-faire attitude, they do have many rules, one of which is that photography is (understandably) only permitted in certain areas. I wish I could have taken more photos, but I think rules are a good thing for communities like this; self-policing means less interference from the government. As the sign says when you exit, “You are now entering the EU.”

Denmark is big on wind energy. My hotel claimed to be 100% wind powered. Given that the nearby winds often felt like being tackled, I can believe it.

The photo to the left above is a boat designed for installing offshore windmills. The thing is massive, about the size of an oil platform. The right photo is a view of the coast. The windmill installation boat in the middle. If you look at those small white pillars just offshore, each one of those is a windmill.

Denmark doesn’t have any oil so wind makes sense. But I suspect another reason behind all the bicycling and clean energy: the entire country is flat and nearly at sea level. If the sea were to rise two meters they’d have a Kevin Costner scenario.

If it wasn’t obvious from everything above, I really enjoyed Copenhagen. It’s one of those places that’s both welcoming and foreign at the same time. And most importantly, more often than not the Danes make a great cup of coffee.

Ever buy a shirt or jacket that you really like, only to have the buttons fall off in a few days? Sure, they give you one of those little packets of buttons, but why don’t they just make the buttons not fall off in the first place?

After thinking this through for a couple weeks, I think I’ve found a solution: a way to make your buttons not fall off. Best part? No sewing is involved.

You will need:

Button

Inner button

Metal eyelet

Wire

Scissors

Use the scissors to remove the existing button(s). Now cut a small hole for the eyelet where the button was. Follow the directions on the eyelet packaging to install it.

Feed the wire through the button, through the eyelet, then through the inner button and back around. Twist the ends of the wire to make it stay in place.

Bam, you’re done. As long as the eyelet and wire hold — and they will — your button isn’t going to fall off.

Here’s a DIY project that’s actually useful: a soap dispenser built into a Mason jar. It’s stupidly easy, so if you have no talent but want to jumpstart your Etsy career, this is for you.

Ingredients

1. Mason jar, or whatever.
Mason jar or you could use a cool looking peanut butter jar, etc. I’m told Mason jars are hip, it’s what the cool kids are using these days. The jar is your choice, but it does need to have a metal lid.

2. Kitchen sink soap dispenser.
You ever see these? Some kitchen sinks have a special hole and you can put a soap dispenser in there. Don’t buy one of the cheap-o ones, those break after a month or two (trust me on this.) Delta makes a sturdy one you can get for ~$35.

Tools

A drill, etc.
Something that makes holes in metal.

Scissors.
Or a knife, you need to cut plastic.

Instructions

As you probably guessed, the only step is to punch a hole in the top of the jar’s lid and screw in the soap dispenser in to that hole.

You can drill one big hole if you have the proper sized drill bit, or you could just drill a bunch of small holes to perforate the lid and safely remove the middle part out with a pair of pliers. The hole doesn’t need to be perfect; the soap dispenser is much wider than the part that fits through the hole.

You’ll likely need to cut the soap dispenser’s straw/hose so that it fits in the jar.